WoW is based on one of the oldest IPs they havewarcraft was around before starcraft and diablo iirc

WoW is just a juggernaught that seems to be finally losing a little steam it was the first big western MMO that got away from teh grind of eastern titles

you dont have to be the best, you just have to be the firstyou be first, do reasonably well, and you are set

with games like GW2, Wildstar and a few others coming out in the near future, we are seeing the next evolution in MMOsi dont know if they will be good evolutions, or if they will be enough to bring wow to its knees (im almost certain it wont) but they will start chipping away at the 8 year old game

WoW is still a great game, and still has a HUGE following, still 10 times what SWTOR had at its peak, but it is getting long in the tooth and its only a matter of time before it falls

SC2 i enjoyed, having not played the first one. D3....was a miss in my books, but that is with playing the beta and watching a play through for the story

honestly, im not sure blizzard could come up with something that would be a runaway smash hit to take over wowanything they do release would be a hit...at least for a while, just because it was a Blizzard product

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

masterpoobaa wrote:Subs will come back up with panda like every expansion. WoW keeps on keeping on.Myself I've gone full circle - noob, scrub, casual raider, quasi hardcore raider, quit, resub and back to noob/scrub

In reality, for every prior expansion, subs come back BEFORE the expansion ends. After the expansion hits is when they drop again because everyone who levelled up and can't be bothered raiding quits again.

Wow, is on the decline but no one or no MMO has been able to top it, Wow will fall by itself, after 8 years people want a change, I know alot of people will say GW2 took Wow down but even without GW2 WoW is sliding into what seems like a grave. If Numbers hold over 10 million, you might, MIGHT get one more exspansion from Wow. But I think GW2 will be just like Age of Conan, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings, etc. it will do well for maybe a year but when people see it is what it is, they will leave it to. If Blizzard wants to stay on top (meaning they are working on a New MMO) they need fresh minds, they do not need the people who are doing WoW now. Wow was at its best Pre-BC, Only thing was 40 man raids were a pain in the butt. I think MoP is a joke, nothing about it makes me want to come back, I walked away Feb 11th 2011 and the only reason I find myself wanting to come back, is I missed raiding (not hard core, but the fun stuff learning content, etc.) I wished I would stuck with Cata cause it seemed very good, I hated WotLk, Pre-BC was my favorite, even with all the things that needed to be fixed it was better imo. ( I say that cause I only played Cata for about 4 months and didnt get to do alot of the raids)

I think MoP is Blizzards way of appealing to the younger people who play this game, but I think they are going about it the wrong way. WoW does seem like it will die, but when? And will there be anything that will ever compare to it? My instints tell me no.

StarCraft- Not a fan, tried Star Trek, almost did Knights but its not the same, I would propbably skip on that tag, Same with Diablo MMO.

I would almost rather see them do a Wow 2.0, then do those others. Last I know alot of people are coming away from the game, but I see people coming back, not because of MoP but because there is nothing else that comes close to it.

The way that they are frantically trying to balance everybody's damage you could have fooled me that we currently have a diablo MMO...

BLizzard really needs to up their game. So many good games are now BtP (e.g. GW2), F2P until max level (e.g. SW:ToR from September). With people seeing that you no longer need to pay for the box and a monthly sub, the additional value you get from playing WoW needs to go up. Dragon Soul effectively cost the players nearly 100 euros (8 months subscription between firelands and DS). If they don't make it worth that money, people are going to go somewhere else where they can get raid content for free or for a small fee.

masterpoobaa wrote:Figures are out on mmo-champ.Last quarter wow lost 1.1mill subs... But I imagine many/most? Are due to D3.

Weren't they saying that D3 isn't even available in China yet? If the vast majority of losses were in the East that implies that D3 barely made a dent. And judging by >10 million D3 sales and only 1.2 million annual passes, most people are fine with buying other games to play without committing to or quitting WoW.

In my experience few people actually unsub right when they quit playing. It takes months to realize you aren't really playing anymore, unless you premeditate with a month-to-month plan and force yourself to quit which is usually not driven by a new game coming out. The majority of losses due to D3 will appear gradually from Jun-Jul-Aug and spike somewhat in Oct for the people with Annual Pass who don't give MoP a chance but stuck with D3 (if they didn't like either they could cancel the Pass and give up the D3 license).

Apparently they attributed their big losses last year to the East as well. The problem is that the two don't necessarily jive -- masses leaving early in Cataclysm suggest they disliked the challenging content, while those leaving during Dragon Soul presumably dislike the lack of it. WoW has a very strange release history in the East. I'm honestly not sure what their expectations are -- my understanding is that certain regions had TBC for a very long time until WotLK was finally released less than a year before Cataclysm's launch. That would produce a very different dynamic for the playerbase, and one that is highly disconnected from Blizzard itself who unfortunately have not conscripted Liberty Prime to deliver their product.

Fivelives wrote:Old game is old. Nothing in WoW is new and shiny anymore - call it the 7 year itch. I imagine that's what they expected, and is probably why they started development on an unannounced MMO a couple of years ago. That belief was reinforced when they opened up the year-long agreement deal.

Any expansion past Cata is probably just cash grabbing via formula anymore, and I'm pretty sure that there's going to be a continued drop-off in subscriber numbers.

My only question is, will the next MMO they put out be World of Warcraft 2? Or will it be based off Starcraft or Diablo instead. I'd bet on Starcraft as a pvp-centric MMO with 3 factions.

I don't expect WoW to decline all that dramatically unless a real newcomer manages to shake up the market in its own right. Titan perhaps, though if they're going in the hinted-rumor direction of a heavily casual/social network deal in an unfamiliar new IP, that will crash and burn. No recent MMO has come even close to convincing WoW players to convert en masse. The polish isn't there, and they're making all the same mistakes Blizzard did in the past PLUS the ones they still make today. I could probably write a book on all the terrible ways that developers have tried to emulate Blizzard and gotten it catastrophically wrong.

Who's to say WoW will ever die in the foreseeable future? They could easily release an expansion that replaced the entire engine and massively restructured in a way indistinguishable from "WoW 2" but without having to worry about splitting the market. Saying that Warcraft is dying could one day be as ridiculous as suggesting that Mario is dying.

Jarvick wrote:And will there be anything that will ever compare to it? My instints tell me no.

Quite likely.

If WoW launched today, it would probably fail. Frankly, I wonder if the whole MMO market would exist with any real success if WoW was never launched.

If any game is going to surpass WoW, it's going to need to develop community, and I don't know if any game will ever be able to create the diverse community that WoW still has. Other games like EVE have a loyal community, but not nearly the diverse one that WoW has.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Oh, I think if SWOTR launched today in a mostly MMOless world (like when wow launched) it'd be just fine. The problem is that the audience is much more mature now having had plenty of experience with WoW. To do well, you not only have to bring new people into the genre, but you also have to pull people away from other MMOs that they may have been entrenched in for the better part of a decade. You can't do that, in my opinion, unless you have a product that is very different and new. It also has to have a level of polish and end game activity that is quite difficult for a new game because of timeline pressures.

I actually highly doubt that. WoW is still one of the more accessible MMOs, which is what set it apart from games like Everquest. That, combined with a well-established IP with a devoted following more or less ensured its success, then or now. Don't underestimate the draw the Blizzard name has. There are people (myself included) that have been playing in the Warcraft universe since Ors & Humans. You could say similar things for Starcraft and the original Diablo. Having a pre-existing fan base is huge for a new game.

halabar wrote:Frankly, I wonder if the whole MMO market would exist with any real success if WoW was never launched.

I think it depends on how you define "real success." Keep in mind that games like Everquest and DAoC were wild successes back in the day, and neither of them ever broke 500k subscribers. I think WoW has raised the bar in that respect, in that everyone seems to believe a game needs millions of subscribers to be successful.

I think in a WoW-less world, there would be more MMOs with fewer players each. And probably fewer players overall, as well - WoW's accessibility is a large part of its success, and I suspect that drew a lot more players into MMO gaming than most people realize.

I find it difficult to credit the WoW subscription drop to D3, because I would figure a lot of WoW+D3 players would have opted for the free game on the 1 year WoW committment, which hasn't expired yet if you got in on the first day it was offered.

hell i know i played WoW in part due to my experiences in D2 company name has a lot to do with it

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

Koatanga wrote:I find it difficult to credit the WoW subscription drop to D3, because I would figure a lot of WoW+D3 players would have opted for the free game on the 1 year WoW committment, which hasn't expired yet if you got in on the first day it was offered.

They said only a little over a million got the Annual Pass and D3 sold over 3.5 million copies the first day alone so it's highly likely that it was a large contributor.

Pretty much every MMO has dropped the ball in some way or other. Usually it's just plain lack of content. RIFT's probably the closest in terms of getting it right, and the amount of content they're putting out is really good - even Blizzard could probably learn from that.

Saying that Warcraft is dying could one day be as ridiculous as suggesting that Mario is dying.

Darielle wrote:Pretty much every MMO has dropped the ball in some way or other. Usually it's just plain lack of content. RIFT's probably the closest in terms of getting it right, and the amount of content they're putting out is really good - even Blizzard could probably learn from that.

Saying that Warcraft is dying could one day be as ridiculous as suggesting that Mario is dying.

Hey, man, compared to the original, Mario is dead to me!

I agree with the whole content, needs to be regular but not too rushed, good video, I do not agree with all of it but do agree with the stand out of hard core raiding, should feel like a Epic quest, we dont have it anymore.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo

I actually highly doubt that. WoW is still one of the more accessible MMOs, which is what set it apart from games like Everquest. That, combined with a well-established IP with a devoted following more or less ensured its success, then or now. Don't underestimate the draw the Blizzard name has. There are people (myself included) that have been playing in the Warcraft universe since Ors & Humans. You could say similar things for Starcraft and the original Diablo. Having a pre-existing fan base is huge for a new game.

I'm so confident in Blizzard that if they were to tell me now that I can start playing a new game without knowing what it is until I receive the box, I'll give them my money and eagerly wait to discover whatever is that they're shipping.

While people call the fail on SC2 or D3, they've still probably put a few hundreds hour of gameplay in each; it would be heaven if a fail game would still allow to have fun for hundreds of hour, in a market where most campaigns last 5 hours when they're long.

It is fascinating to consider that the two big intellectual properties of the last half century, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have failed to succeed as MMOs, when warcraft has succeeded.

As a personal reflection, I think this means that it must have strong intellectual property, but more importantly there must also be something about the gameplay that hooks players in to begin, and makes people come back week after week, and keep an active subscription.

These are two different things I think. Blizzard were worried enough about the initial "hook" that they spent the vast majority of their effort in the last expansion's build about refreshing it. This tells us a lot about MMO market forces that we as end-game players probably don't see - and I think I've seen blues allude to it in the past - the number of people that hit level 20 and then quit.

Making people come back week after week? I think appealing to all markets - pvp, individual progression, and raiding. Interesting that in Pandaclysm, there's a focus on strengthening individual progression with reputations - and Blizzard felt worried enough about the lack of join between individual progression and raiding to implement LFR mid product lifecycle.

I think there's also something about being a market leader in this space that means other people struggle to compete. As above, if you can't beat the competition, in both levelling and end game, you won't keep subscribers. I don't think you can be a follower in the MMO market - people just won't part with the subscription money month after month.

First, I just want to say that it's nice to see a thread like this go on for more than a couple pages without devolving into the old casual/hardcore flamewar.

Second, I'm in the camp of folks who believe that WOW has sort of jumped the shark, and the loss of subs is just the natural slow progression from a very high peak. I think it is about mechanics, social circles and lore:

If I'm not mistaken, Wrath was the last expansion that was tied to the RTS games. MOP certainly is going in a new direction that folks who were really excited about being 'in the world' just may not care about as much. There's mechanics and basic gameplay that simply get boring once you've seen a few different mixes of the same old stuff. And finally, people that continue playing to play with friends they've made - once those start to leave, the other points can quickly lead to someone wondering if continued time and money investment is worth it.

I don't see myself playing any MMO after MOP. But mostly because at this point, I am in the last group.

I actually highly doubt that. WoW is still one of the more accessible MMOs, which is what set it apart from games like Everquest. That, combined with a well-established IP with a devoted following more or less ensured its success, then or now. Don't underestimate the draw the Blizzard name has. There are people (myself included) that have been playing in the Warcraft universe since Ors & Humans. You could say similar things for Starcraft and the original Diablo. Having a pre-existing fan base is huge for a new game.

Not sure I agree.. (and yes, I have my original Orcs vs Humans discs as well..)

Consider that you would also have another 5+ years of separation from the WoW IP.

What I'm looking at is what Vanilla WoW was like, and how that would fit in today's social-media-instant-access type of world. I guess it would depend on what other games existed, and what, if anything, built upon what Everquest did. Part of the Everquest/WoW success was the transition from board gamers and the DnD crowd. Not sure the playerbase would be the same for a product launch now.

The funny thing is, Panda is going back to being more of a grindy experience, something Cata didn't have nearly as much of (except for that gawdawful MF zone). But the Panda grind is a casual one.

I wonder how that would play, if WoW was just being introduced?

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Just remember one thing when talking What If..., WoW is what actually changed the MMORPG market and shaped it as it is now, as before WoW MMORPG weren't really that much of a market and Everquest was widely regarded as the housewife game, with DAOC being the only other solid MMORPG around and was PvP based (RvR!). Then came WoW and playing a MMORPG became different, people were curious to play this new Blizzard title and the fever started.

If you look at the Western market today is heavily shaped after WoW, games like SWTOR or Rift are obvious clones, the few games that tried something different, original, were titles like Warhammer or AoC, shame that they were missing half the content and the other half was broken, with GW2 being pretty much the only one standing on its own feet.

If WoW was released today maybe could have some competition, but isn't sure as the MMORPG crazed was started by WoW, and it's quite possible that would still crunch these numbers, maybe even more as nowadays machines are better than what they were back then and there more and more casual gamers.

To close, you say that WoW jumped the shark, but I remind you that the most popular expansion has been the casual oriented WotLK, unlike the hard Cata Heroics, and in MoP we have Pandas, LFR, cheesy heroics, Pokemon and FarmVille.

On the other hand it's another two years later, after Cataclysm, and for once competition is a bit more than just "like WoW 1.0, but with this and that new feature" clones. I don't expect subscriptions to keep falling like in the last two years but I do think WoW is past its prime and no casual features can cover that up. But that decline may well last a decade.

I could easily see WoW just chugging along continuously, except that the levelling system in WoW can't just keep going forever. Eventually the level cap will be too high for most new players, and they'd have to dramatically alter the game to keep it going.

There are already game series (especially sports games) out there that release a new installment every year and people keep buying enough to keep them going. WoW could be the MMORPG version of that - if it didn't have the level inflation issue.

degre wrote:If WoW was released today maybe could have some competition, but isn't sure as the MMORPG crazed was started by WoW, and it's quite possible that would still crunch these numbers, maybe even more as nowadays machines are better than what they were back then and there more and more casual gamers.

To close, you say that WoW jumped the shark, but I remind you that the most popular expansion has been the casual oriented WotLK, unlike the hard Cata Heroics, and in MoP we have Pandas, LFR, cheesy heroics, Pokemon and FarmVille.

If Vanilla WoW launched now, I don't think it would succeed. If WoW launched as what Pandaclysm is, then it might.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.